Sen. Leila M. de Lima said yesterday that she is willing to resign if President Duterte could prove her alleged links to illegal drugs, noting that she is ready to prove the Chief Executive wrong.
“I am willing to resign, I am willing to be shot in front of the President. I just have to qualify true evidence, not coerced, manufactured, fabricated, invented,” De Lima told reporters during a press conference in Quezon City. “I am confident to prove him wrong. I will stand by my innocence, any time now and forever,” she added.
De Lima, who has repeatedly denied allegations of drug coddling, said Friday that although most of the attacks against her were lies, there were “some snippets of facts” in them.
During the press conference, she admitted that Ronnie Dayan was indeed her former driver and bodyguard before she started working for the government. Dayan, she said, resigned in 2015.
She declined to confirm reports that Dayan was also her lover but acknowledged that they still communicate. “No matter how close he is to me, I don’t want to touch on that because it is a personal matter. He no longer works for me as driver-bodyguard. He is no longer with me but we still communicate until now,” De Lima said.
The neophyte senator also rejected reports that the house she reportedly funded for Dayan was hers but admitted that she has visited the house a couple of times.
The former Justice Secretary said that a terrified Dayan called her recently to seek help after he reportedly received word that cops were “hunting him down.”
“I got a call from him, he was panicking, crying, and telling me that he could not return to his home because there were cops looking for him,” De Lima recounted.
She added that local cops have cautioned him to lie low because other policemen would raid his home and make it look like he possessed firearms or even capture him and make him a state witness against his former boss. (PNA)